The Things You Find
by RaeLaser1
Summary: The Things You Find /When Poking Around In Someone's Else's Brain\. Takes place immediately after the Liberty Island Incident. A young Telepath stumbles across a Toad.


A point-of-view fic.

AN: I do not own any of this. Duh. Do you honestly think I'm Stan Lee?

**The Things You Find (When Poking Around In Someone's Else's Brain)**

Chapter 1

You saw the brilliant blue light engulfing the Statue of Liberty. You know that the world's leaders are meeting nearby. And so, although you know you can do nothing to either help or hurt, you begin running. You are pretty far away, so by the time you reach the bay, the fun appears to be over. You kick around, circle the shore for a while.

Then something strange shows up. _Something_ is large, a bit lumpy, and is making gagging noises.

_Oh my god, it's a person!_

You rush over, again failing to take note of your probable uselessness. At the very least you can get the huddled form out of the water.

The moment your hands touch his skin, you know something is wrong. You dismiss it, chalk it up to your overactive imagination, and drag the – _him_ out

Now you know something is wrong. His skin is green. If it were blue, you could dismiss it as an effect of being in the cold water. But no, its definitely green, with a very unpleasant brown tint. His lips are an unattractive mesh of brown, green, and icy blue. His hair is mossy green.

He looks a bit like you've always imagined a recently dead corpse to look. Green. But he can't be dead, not yet because he was just coughing.

You roll him on his back, off his side, and just then you notice the angry red burns on his mouth chin and neck, disappearing under his collar.

_Ouch..._

Dithering for a moment, you then begin to pump his chest, until a fountain of water spews from his lips. His eyes flicker open, for a moment you're transfixed...

_Gold eyes, molten gold, blue teardrop pupils_...

And then his eyes slide shut, and his muscles go lax. You begin thinking, he must have had something to do with what happened at the statue. To ask him... but he's unconscious.

For the first time in four years, you hesitantly think about using your 'curse.' Because you are, of course, a mutant. Nobody can ever know. You didn't fight through four horrible, nerve-wracking years just to be exposed now. But, nobody else is around. Just this once couldn't hurt...

***

_Y'know, it's generally considered rude to poke around in somebody's brain wit'out askin' permission first. Yeah, I see you there, you little turd. Nice, normal, uncontroversial. Did you just want to poke around in the half-dead green guy's mind? I bet you've never seen an __**obvious**__ mutant before, have you? Hell, I'll bet your family doesn't even know you're a mutant!_

_S'wot I thought._

_Oh, you saw that, did you? Yeah, I'm a terrorist. I've KILLED people. Y'know wot? I enjoyed it. So keep yer preachy morals to yerself, I don't care._

_Haven't I scared you off yet? Why are you still here? You gonter watch me die? Yeah, I know I'm dying. Damned Weather Witch...What? Nobody. It's nothing. None of yer business, at any rate._

_Hey, Hey! Stay outter my memories. Trust me you sweaty punk, you don't wanter go peeking around there. Life doesn't treat us __**real**__ mutants very kindly._

_Oh, you wanter see anyways? I won't stop you. Just don't say I didn't warn you. _

***

_(Secondhand account by Midwife)_

_Sweat. Grunt. Push._

_"_Push! You can do it Mavis! You're almost there!" a motherly voice bellowed.

"Raaarghaa! Edmund, you bastard! I'll kill you!"

"Now now, don't do that! Focus on your baby!"

"Aaaaagh!"

"_Push _Mavis!"

"WAAAAGHAGH!" Mavis screamed.

The midwife gleefully shouted encouraging things, guiding the baby out. He was set perfectly in line; although Mavis would never admit it, this was an astonishingly easy birth. Hopefully the baby would have inherited its mothers lung power.

With one final heave, the baby was in her arms, and Anna, the midwife, was busily wiping mucus from the baby's mouth. Like most babies, he looked a little squashed, and he seemed to be a funny color under the blood and such. Perhaps he wasn't getting enough air.

"Where's my baby?" Mavis demanded aggressively. "Where's Edmund? Why isn't he in here yet?!" Another testament to the easy birth, Mavis was already rarin' to go.

Anna frowned. There was definitely something _odd_ about this baby, and it wasn't just the skin tone. He wasn't crying. He was breathing normally, and had a crinkled look on his face, but he wasn't crying. And then there were his eyes. She had never before seen a child with such oddly shaped eyes. They were all blue of course, like any other child, but the irises seemed to be _teardrop_ shaped!

Then the tongue slid out and curled around her thumb, which just so happened to be a good six inches away.

Anna went very still, her thoughts racing at a million miles an hour. She hastily stuffed the tongue back in it's mouth (_That_ provoked a cry out of it) and said with a big false grin, "Here's your baby ma'am!" stuffing the thing in it's mother's arms, and sidling out the door the minute Mavis's gaze left her.

Anna flung herself in her car, nearly broke the key in the ignition, and nearly killed it by stomping on the gas as she was turning the key, forgetting about shifting to reverse. She finally managed to peel out of the driveway, but not before hearing a shrill scream of horror, followed instantly by a baby's cries.

***

_There, happy now? O' course not. Don'tchou __**dare**__ start howling on me, I'm wet enough already!_

_I guess when you were born yer parents were happy, eh? No screaming, no hysteria. Gawd, stop it! What's crying gonner do?That wasn't even a real memory, 'n you can bet it's not the worst thing 'as ever happened to me._

_Oh, now you're curious, eh? A little morbid interest now? You wouldn't have survived what I've lived through, luv. With all the effort you probably put inter looking normal, I have my doubts you could survive it now._

_Yer __**really**__ curious now, aren'cha? Yer probably thinkin' how tough you are. Thinkin' you'd a'been fine._

_Well, you wouldn't a'been_

_Prove it? __**Prove it?!**__ The hell? Fine, you wanter know so bad? You want proof? Take a look 'n then be glad yer life is so cushy!_

***

"Freak! Freak!"

"Froggy!"

"Frogboy!"

"Ugly fuck."

"Monster!"

"DEMON! Miss Coleridge said so!"

The little green boy sat in the middle of the circle of children, his eyes glazed, the expression on his face that of a coma victim. It was his best weapon. A toy that won't play is a toy that you don't want to play with. Pretty quickly now the children would get into an argument and forget about him.

Predictably, "She did not!"

"Did so!"

"She did, I heard her!"

"So did I!"

The group immediately began fistfighting, and the boy immediately crawled away, his deadened face coming to life. None of them noticed him go.

If the adults hadn't already known he was green nobody else might have known it, he was so discolored with bruises. Purple, black, yellow, that all-accursed green...

He hated green. It's what made everybody hate him, so he hated it. He half-slithered, half-hopped over to the shard of broken mirror that Miss Coleridge and Mr. Rum left lying about in the yard in the hopes that he might find it and try to swallow it or something.

Instead he grasped the edges firmly in his hands, cutting slightly into his palms, and studied his face. His hair was a dark, mossy green, perhaps because it needed a wash so badly. His teeth were little and sunken and also-green, likewise his gums. He put the mirror down and thought hard, picking at a scabby knee. What was a demon? Could Miss Coleridge perhaps be right? Were there other demons? If so, why wasn't he with them?

The little boy stuck his grubby fingers in his mouth, and pulled out his grayish tongue, squinting at it as it just kept coming and coming.

He had almost as much mobility and strength in his tongue as he did in his fingers. As he valued his life, however, nobody at the orphanage knew this.

Little Mort dearly wished he was sixteen. He wasn't quite sure just how old he was, but all the other residents left when they turned this magical age to strike out on their own. They seemed like Gods to him, towering over him and majestically indifferent.

Although Mort was not aware of this fact at the time, the only reason he was not hurt more seriously was because they were afraid of him. There was a time, a time he could scarcely remember, when the beatings were worse. He had finally lashed out, and bitten a child, drawing blood immediately. He had refused to let go and hung on doggedly, as the boy screamed and cried and run as fast as is possible for a small boy to run when another small boy of about equal size and weight is hanging onto your arm with his teeth.

Eventually, after various methods had been tried (and failed) to get him to release (the other boy screaming all the while) Miss Coleridge and her assistants' were afraid they were going to have to cut him loose, Mr. Rum came and popped his jaw open with a neat trick of his fingers.

Mort had been punished severely (beaten into unconsciousness) but only a day later the bite mark on the boy's arm turned green-grey and swelled up monstrously, and he was sent away to a nearby hospital. Mort never did hear what had happened to him, but since he never returned, Mort had the sneaking suspicion that he had died.

The children were called inside for mealtime. Mort didn't bother to follow. They hadn't fed him for years.

He crawled up the chain link fence, pressed his face up against the links, and watched attentively. *A long time ago, in desperation, Mort had stumbled across this unexpected food source, and he never looked back. He of course had no idea that pigeons held a lot of vermin and diseases, but he hadn't fallen sick yet. Perhaps his constitution was stronger than normal people's.

With a loud _WHAP!_ Mort's tongue shot out and snagged the unfortunate bird. He licked up a few stray feathers, and hopped down from the fence, content.

***

AN: Please feel free to ask me any questions that you might have. I'm not planning on making this very long, perhaps about four or five chapters.

*I sure can't come up with a better explanation for why he eats birds! Can you?


End file.
